Stroll down to the SF MoMa (beautifully minimalist and contained), and after that spend the afternoon browsing the casually curated boutiques in Hayes Valley.

Pass by the glassy-eyed city professionals lining up for yet another cup of interminably extracted Chilean drip coffee from Ritual Roasters, and watch as they diligently Facebook-update their whereabouts as they head on to the Jazz Center on Franklin Street. In the city of a million mobile apps, you get your rides via Uber and your news on your iPad; and nobody will dispute the crowdsourced authority of a rating from Yelp.

Swedish House Mafia will fly in for a night to DJ a party in a killer renovated theater hall in the gritty Tenderloin neighbourhood for a room full of tech geeks in their twenties, and  glossy, well-dressed girls they met via OkCupid will slink around them.

If Jack Dorsey walks into a bar in North Beach, heads turn and tweets go out. But a sighting of Anne Hathaway at Flour + Water is just passé, you’re more busy recommending the 2006 Brunello to fellow superusers on Foursquare.

The home of the New American cuisine movement, the Bay Area is a haven for the foodie; where words like organic and locavore should be dropped from menus and grocery stores as they can completely be taken for granted.

The thickest of caramel ice cream and the darkest artisanal chocolate must always be sprinkled with the lightest grey sea salt; and toddlers happily chow down on quinoa, kale, truffle-drenched burrata, chorizo and kumquats.

Here very serious people invest their time and money in trying to live forever; and each heartbeat, footstep, and twitch in muscle and BMI is measured by sleek devices that are fashionably snapped on to every other slender wrist.

Labor Day weekend is spent at the Burning Man Festival deep in the Nevada desert, and Sunday mornings at the waterside farmer’s market at the Ferry Building. If the sun is out, you’re hiking through Point Reyes by 9am on a Saturday; and when the July fog rolls in you install yourself in a corner at the fabled City Lights bookstore, perhaps perched right next to where Alan Ginsberg once wrote.

Echoes of the Beat poets resonate in the restlessness of a generation that has found its way to the tremulous edge of a continent that will always be physically isolated; but comfort is taken in the fact that the social media revolutionaries on the ground in Tahrir Square are only a Google+ hangout away. 

San Francisco is a city of ideas. Where the power of a thought could change the way we travel, see, hear, learn, think, even love. People don’t go to work here; they follow their passions in offices parading as super-slick warehouse lofts stocked with art, colour, music, inspiration. And out of these emerge the apps that we play with, the devices we carry around in our pockets, and use to interact with and capture pieces of our incredibly distinct worlds in panoramic, microscopic, open, broken, tinted sepia, fluorescent, rose-hued Instagram effects. All of which personalize our viewpoint and reflect how we feel on any given day. The beat goes on.

7 ways to have a perfect weekend in the Bay, based on lifestyle

The Outdoor Adventurer. Most likely to be found in full wetsuit with her handshaped Farallon Surfboard at Pacifica Beach, or biking through the Marin headlands in supersoft tees from Marine Layer. The Sunday favourite is a run down to Ocean Beach, with drinks at the Beach Chalet after.

The Foodie. Spotted intermittently at the location-secret Lazy Bear Brunch and pays up for fusion at Benu and fancy pizza at Cotogna; happy to jump price spectrums from super low key La Tacqueria to Michelin-starred Saison in the Mission; always willing to kill hours waiting for a seat at Burma Superstar in the Richmond or for coconut ice-cream at Bi-rite Creamery.

The Style Runner. Shops couture for San Francisco Ballet openings from Susan’s of Burlingame, the latest trends at Acrimony in Hayes Valley, or scours vintage at La Rosa in the Haight. For the softest Italian leather shoes, she will make the hike to Flats in St Helena in Napa. Not afraid to go online, this girl is all over Moda Operandi or sensibly borrowing via Rent the Runway.

The Art Lover. Loves watching silent old films at Foreign Cinema in the Mission after the edgy Precita Eyes Walking graffiti tour; in the evenings she is found browsing art and sipping cocktails at 111 Minna Gallery when not attending galas at the deYoung Museum.

The Party Girl. Does not miss the Coachella scene and hits up every tech launch event in SOMA. A veteran tourer of the porn studios at The Armory and dancing queen at Booty SF, her days are spent on Chestnut Street in the Marina and nights sipping cocktails at Beretta.

The Hipster. Early mornings at the Sprit Rock Meditation Center followed by some flea market scouring in Alameda and garden shopping at Flora Grubb Gardens in Bayview. Hanging with friends at Mission Bowl, and then dancing to live African music at Little Baobob is all part of a perfect weekend for her.

The Techie. All about the networking, whether working at Parisoma dressed in a series of Gitman Brothers shirts from Noe’s Mill Mercantile, schmoozing with the VCs at 25 Lusk, comparing app ideas with fellow startup hotshots and tech journos at The Creamery, or do-gooding at the Hattery, a self-described ideas and innovation lab.

-- from http://www.vogue.in/content/weekend-san-francisco

You can classify someone as a hipster by the way they dress, they people they hang out with, or the attitude they take toward life.

Most people find it easiest to label someone a hipster based on what they wear. You know, the dude(ette) who dons thick-rim glasses, tight jeans, ironic thrift shop t-shirts, and an iPhone? Lucky you didn’t see them carrying a jar of homemade Kombucha, as well – or a pack of cigarettes for that matter.

I met Caitlin Fate of Marin County at Thrift Town along busy Mission Street near 16th Street in San Francisco as she perused the aisles in search of vintage clothing.

Formerly of San Francisco, Fate visits the Mission District because it is a “multicultural epicenter.”

She said that many so-called hipsters are probably just trying to fit an image and don’t all necessarily share the hipster mindset. Even to her, hipsterdom is hard to define.

“It’s in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “It changes from person to person… I’ve heard people relate it to a hippie.”

Her friend Andrew McQueeney, also of Marin, came to Thrift Town with her. He says hipster characteristics relate most closely to indie music styles.

See how it’s hard to reach a consensus?

McQueeney regularly encounters hipsters on the street, but doesn’t consider himself a hipster.

Fate retorted, saying “that’s the thing though. I feel like if someone asks you if you’re a hipster, and someone says ‘no, I’m not a hipster!,’ it kinda means you’re a hipster.”

“I think the whole point of people buying things from places like this… is that they don’t want to be defined by any category,” she said.

And that is how we begin to define hipster culture: a group of individuals who want to be different, but in the end form cliques because so many others strive to do the same.

Debbie Olivero is the face of Thrift Town. She works at the store as a greeter, checking bags, purses, skateboards and backpacks at the front door.
